Laura Tanna

“She was very, very upset. She wouldn’t talk to me for a couple of days. Then she came around and said: ‘Well, it is your life’. I said: ‘You’re right. I have to marry somebody I really love. I can’t marry just to anybody, an arranged marriage. I don’t even know the person’. I just told her that.” Diana and he married in 1969.

He relocated his shop to the Crafts Market and bought his first piece of real estate in New Kingston, from Thomas Desulmé. “I saw a sign on Knutsford Boulevard: ‘Lot for Sale’. I just slowed down the car, copied the telephone number, and made a call.” It was the corner lot near Mr. Chandiram’s store, his first employer. “You could say that when I saw that he put up a building there it looked good and, why shouldn’t I do it too? Actually, maybe you could say he inspired me.

“I went to George Fatta, my attorney in those days, and said: ‘I have $2,000, but I want to buy this lot for $10,000.’

“‘Gordon, are you crazy? Nobody will give you a mortgage on a piece of land for 80 per cent mortgage.’

“I don’t care. You find me somebody who will give me the mortgage because I really want to buy it.” He found Blaise Trust. I paid 10 per cent interest, bought the lot and slowly, slowly I paid. This was ’69 or ’70. I was very excited. I got an English architect, John Quintan. Oliver Jones, my friend who used to board at the same place, was head of Imperial Life, a Canadian Insurance Company. I went to him and said: ‘I need about $90,000 to put up this building.’ He said: ‘No problem.’ He charged 10 per cent interest too.”

With a centrally located building on a corner lot in New Kingston, he rented offices to five businesses, and earned $40,000 per annum on a $100,000 investment. And that is how he started buying lots in New Kingston every time he had a little extra money. He recalls: “Everybody was looking for space in New Kingston, moving from downtown, all the major companies, insurance companies, embassies, banks. New Kingston became corporate headquarters of Jamaica, so I just kept on buying.”

Moving up

Meanwhile, he says his store imported silver and gold from refineries in London and Toronto, employing local Jamaicans of Indian ancestry to make jewelry. Tewani started travelling throughout the Caribbean, then moved their own store uptown, trying first to rent a shop in the newly built Tropical Plaza: “We thought we’d lost the shop in Tropical Plaza, so I went and got a shop in The Mall, and then got both. Now to find that much money to stock it. Lots of time we had empty boxes in the shelf so it looked like we have stock. The bank was very difficult. They wouldn’t lend us money. I went to two, three, four banks.” Finally a Canadian manager loaned him £200. He and Diana worked often until two in the morning, selling all day, then doing paper work, pricing items, and always keeping their expenses to a minimum. He bought an old van and travelled at six in the morning to sell jewelry to shops in Montego Bay and Ocho Rios.

Tragedy stuck with the birth of their first child, Ravi, in 1970. “He had jaundice. They gave him the wrong blood transfusion. He was dying. We even had to get Msgr Meany at Holy Cross Church to give him last rites. My wife is Roman Catholic. I’m a Hindu by religion, but I keep my mind open. I go to church if I have to go to church and worship Jesus Christ; it’s perfectly all right with me. The Lord can only be one. If I go to temple to worship, I feel there is only one God. So they gave him last rites, but then Dr. Gray, who is Professor Gray now, said maybe he has a chance. So we rush him to University Hospital. He was just a two-days-old baby. Diane couldn’t move, so I have to take a nurse with me, and I didn’t know the University Hospital. I ran there and didn’t know where to go, because it is a big complex. Finally, we found the place. The baby had all sorts of tubes. It was pathetic to even look at the baby.

Specialized school

“They took care of him immediately, but we didn’t know if he was going to live. They had to give the heavy dose of antibiotic to save his life. That damaged his hearing nerve. We took him to John Hopkins in Baltimore, Royal National Throat, Nose and Ear Hospital in London, trying to find how he could be helped. We were told he can’t be helped. We sent him to a specialized school for the deaf in Fort Lauderdale when he was four. We both just break down. Two of us. But we had no choice. He stayed there until he was a teenager and learned a trade. We also found out that cochlear ear implant can help, so he had that done. They had to drill his skull and put that, but he’s OK. He’s married now with three children and his wife Anjani. They work with us in the store.”

Diana and Gordon have two daughters, Natini and Shalini. Gordon’s mother came from India to live with them and, though Diana and she didn’t speak the same language, they managed well until Mrs. Tewani died 18 years ago. Diana’s mother, Victoria Stephenson, is 82 and still works in the family business. Gordon says of his wife: “We have been working together for 45 years. I must say this to you, she’s a great mother, great grandmother and great wife. I couldn’t have found a better person than her.”

They have six grandchildren and spend every Sunday afternoon with them, when they’re not travelling. Both love seeing the world. Says Gordon: “I leave Jamaica because of the change. You learn when you travel, seeing different countries and cultures. But honestly, I love Jamaica the best. I haven’t seen a more beautiful country than Jamaica.” At age 70 he looks back and says: “God has blessed me with good health. I’ve worked very long and I’m still going to keep on working as long as I have good health. I have no regret. I have lived in one of the most beautiful parts of the world, beautiful country, good people, good friends, and a very good, happy family. What can I tell you? I go to work in the morning and I look forward in the evening to come home and spend time with my family and my grandchildren. That is my greatest pleasure, honestly.” (Concludes)

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Courtesy: The Gleaner, Jamaica (Published on February 26, 2012)

Click here for Part-I, Part-II, Part-III

The post Tewani finds love and success in Jamaica (Part-IV) first appeared on Sindh Courier.

Laura Tanna

Instead of returning to India when his four-year contract working in a store on King Street for an Indian family ended, Gordhan Tewani used a portion of his return airfare and salary he had frugally saved to establish himself in Kingston. But it wasn’t easy.

A former employee from the same store, Ram, who had opened a shop of his own in Kingston, welcomed Tewani into his home and Gordhan worked a bit with him. But not everyone was so welcoming. He relates: “The police car stop right there at the shop and the police came out and said to me: ‘You’re Gordon Tewani?’

“‘Yes.’

“‘Immigration we are from. Superintendent Wright want to see you at Duke Street. So come with us.’ I was really, really, frightened. To be honest, I nearly wet my pants. Honestly, I was in my early 20s, very young, and didn’t know about these things. I was very scared. So I went there and sat quietly.

“He said: ‘I have a complaint about you.’

“I said: ‘What kind of complaint, Sir?’

“‘That you don’t have any money and you are a charge on the Government of Jamaica.’

“Luckily, I had a savings book in my pocket in which I had bonus of £100 from my boss and I had saved £100, so it showed £200.’Sir, this is my savings account book.’ I showed him.

“He said: ‘But that’s a lot of money! You have plenty money. You can go. I don’t know what this man have against you.’ I really don’t know which person he was talking about, but somebody from my community complained.”

At first, Tewani put down £55 to open a souvenir shop in a new shopping center in Montego Bay being developed by James Marzouca. Then Ram suggested: “Gordon, I know you don’t have that much money. Why don’t we go in a partnership? I’ll invest the money, you run the shop and we share the profit half and half?” But when Tewani returned to Montego Bay, he said: “I lost that £55, yes, because I signed a lease, and Mr. Marzouca threatened to sue me for three years’ [rent]. I start to almost cry in front of him. I said: ‘How am I going to pay you?’ So he just tore up the lease and said: ‘All right. Go. But you’re not going to get this money, what you paid me.’ So I lost that money.”

First shop

Tewani rented his first shop in Kingston from the Issa Group of Companies for £45 in the Henderson Shopping Centre, opposite the old Victoria Crafts Market at 1 King Street. He describes getting started: “I remember trying to do everything myself, to get a carpenter to make the showcase, I go and buy the lumber and glass, so I could save money. I went to two different Indians to sell me goods on a credit basis, of 60 or 90 days. With money left, I bought items quite cheap, like I sell rum, straw bags, local Khus Khus perfume, calypso records, shirts and beer mugs with Jamaica on them, key rings, playing cards, different souvenirs. I’d open the store shutters myself, clean the bathroom. I couldn’t afford to employ somebody. I’d sweep.

“I used to stand in the doorway of Caribbean Shop and invite customers to come inside, talk to them, wish them good morning. Those days, we got a lot of cruise ships to Kingston and American sailors. Everybody who comes to Kingston, they used to love it. I wouldn’t like to lose a customer, so I tried my best to talk to them. If you have a husband and wife, the secret is you hold the wife. If you hold the husband, the wife might say: ‘No, no, honey, we don’t need this. Let’s go.’ The wife would say: ‘He’s a nice guy. Let’s buy something from him.’ I was the first person to open the shop and when all the shops were closed, I was still open because I didn’t have anything to do at home.

“I start to board with Mrs. Short on Gore Terrace, Constant Spring Road. Lodging means breakfast, laundry and a nice, clean room with bathroom. Very nice lady, a retired Jamaican nurse who made a little money in America, bought a four-bedroom house. One bedroom for herself, she rented me one bedroom and one to Oliver Jones. She get to like me so she treated me like a son. When I’m having breakfast, she used to sit at the table and insist that I eat everything, because this is my first meal, and it’s good for me.”

Making a profit

Though Tewani badly missed his family in India, he knew the opportunities in Jamaica were better. “If I made less than one pound a day, at £20 salary, and if I’m selling in a day £20 or £30, I could easily see that I’m making £10 a day profit, you know. A person who didn’t make one pound a day and now I’m making £10, I’m doing very well.” But he lived frugally and saved every penny. “I used to cross the road at Gore Terrace every evening, go to Maurice – I still remember the name of the restaurant – have a quarter of fried chicken, French fries, bread roll, and a coke. For four years, same meal. And read a book or Readers Digest, listen to a transistor radio, fall asleep. Get up, do the same routine, catch a bus, go to work. Same routine. I couldn’t even afford a girlfriend.”

Eventually, he bought a used car and started dating. Then he met Diana Maillard and his world changed. Abdulla Marzouca’s niece, Diana Maillard, was an enchanting mixture of French, Irish and Lebanese ancestry but definitely not Indian. Tewani remembers: “My father’s Indian. I was the one to break the cycle to marry outside of India. When I got married to Diane” – he calls her Diane though her name is Diana – “a lot of the Indians didn’t want any chat with me, the Sindhi community. But let me tell you something. When I was in business, a lot of Indian bosses would approach my brother” – who joined Gordon in Jamaica after several years – “and say: ‘Would your brother marry my daughter?’ I’d say: ‘No, I can’t get married to somebody I really don’t love.’ They were wealthy, but I couldn’t do that. When I met Diane, it was different. We start to go out. We love each other. She went to do a beautician’s course in Montreal. When she left, I was a little heartbroken that I probably won’t see her again. We kept in touch because I know I loved her so I would imagine she loved me too. I couldn’t get her off my mind. I had a business. I’d finally bought a car. I used to go out on dates and after I met Diane, it was just her alone. There was nobody else.” (Continues)

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Courtesy: The Gleaner, Jamaica (Published on February 19, 2012)

Click here for Part-I, Part-II

The post How Gordhan Tewani started making his fortune in Jamaica (Part-III) first appeared on Sindh Courier.

By Laura Tanna

We all might learn from the discipline, almost deprivation, which a youthful Gordon Tewani displayed in his quest to better his family, leaving school a year before graduation to seek work in a foreign land. When jewelry store owner and real estate tycoon Tewani got his first job offer to leave India in 1959 to work in Jamaica, he says: “I asked my uncle: ‘Where is Jamaica?’ He told me: ‘It’s America.’ So you wouldn’t believe it, when I arrived at Palisadoes Airport I see palm trees. I’d seen pictures in a magazine and thought: ‘America? America don’t look like this! The people, they look African origin.’ I was wondering if I’m in the wrong place. Honestly, that’s what I thought in my ignorance. In those days, coming from a Commonwealth country an immigration officer would just stamp on your passport: ‘Landed’. There was no work permit required because Jamaica was still under the British. My boss’ son looked at me, said: ‘Are you Gordon? I’m Pokar.’ He drove me to his house on Waterloo Road, opposite Devon House. Today that is [the] Salvation Army. That was Mr. Chandiram’s house. We three employees lived in an annex. I’ll never forget it, because they never had hot water in the bathroom and the bathroom was downstairs. We had to come on the steps, tie a towel around us, run into the bathroom, take cold shower, and run up again. The steps were on the outside of the house!”

“The name of the business was India House, 60 King Street. They told me this was the main street. I remember observing electrical lines overhead. In Bombay, they are underground so we don’t see them. I said to myself: ‘This is really a small place.’ But a beautiful place. My impression was of really beautiful vegetation and very clean. Mrs. Chandiram, the manager, said: ‘Your job is to go behind the counter. When they make sales, they will give to you to wrap.’ I was a person very keen on learning. If I don’t have anything to wrap, if they are selling something, I would go, stand beside them, see what they’re saying and try to learn. I learned so fast she told me: ‘You can sell now.’ She gave us a little book to write the sales; almost every day I used to be number one in sales. At that time tourists were coming to Kingston because Kingston was a very, very safe place. You could walk on King Street, nobody would trouble you. Everybody was very mannerly. They said: ‘Good morning, good evening, good afternoon, how are you?’ I found Jamaicans among the friendliest people in the world.”

“Mr. Chandiram opened In-Bond because he saw a lot of potential in selling to tourists, mainly perfume and items like cameras. There was quite a thick book of perfume list, the sizes, prices, and different brands. I’m not kidding you. I knew every size, every brand by heart. The other staff, if some customer asked them: ‘Do you have Chanel Number Five, one ounce?’ they would ask me: ‘Mr. Gordon, what is the price for it?’ And I would tell them. My memory was really good. Everything I see someone is doing, I would say: ‘I can do it too.’

“There was no private life allowed. Every morning the driver would drive us to the shop. Every evening we would drive back to the house. He had a strict instruction not to stop anywhere. We’d come from work, have our dinner. They gave us reasonably good food to eat and after that, back to work again, like checking what we sold for the day and goods to price at home, sometimes until ten or 11 o’clock. The only place our boss allowed us to go was to movie on Sunday. He would give us five shillings. The ticket was four shillings. We walked from Waterloo Road to Half-Way Tree and take a JOS bus for three pence. At intermission we’d buy a coke, which cost seven pence. All we were left was two pence. We couldn’t take a bus again, so we walked back from the Regal, Carib or State.

“I got £60 every three months. Two-thirds of my salary I sent to my mother and £20 I’m to keep because boss used to give us everything like soap, hair oil, and shaving. I might have to buy a shirt or a shoe. I had a contract for four years. He is to provide me transport from Mumbai [formerly Bombay] to Kingston and from Kingston to Bombay. I saved £100 over the four years and my boss gave me a bonus of £100. I told him to return to India, we want to go to Canada. He got a ticket that we could go from Miami to New York to Toronto, then from there to Bombay. There was another guy, Rochie, who still lives in Ocho Rios and he was working same time. I remember going to Miami, finding the cheapest hotel there, US$4.50 per night. A Cuban restaurant on the ground floor used to sell a quarter of chicken with French fries and a coke for US 39 cents. I would eat that. When he came we both stayed in the same room, because we had two beds and that way we shared the cost of the room. It cost US$2.25 then. From there we left to New York and to Toronto. We changed the ticket and came back to Kingston. I remember going to Mr. Chandiram’s office, just a courtesy. Mr. Chandiram was away in India but Pokar was there. He was shocked to see me. He says: ‘What are you doing here?’

“You see, I missed my family very much. When I first came to Jamaica, after three months my father passed away in India. I couldn’t go back because if I went back, I lost my job and jobs were very hard to get. I really missed [him] very much, but I had to establish myself and the opportunity was better in Jamaica than in India. I only saw my mother again after nine years. I was here for five years more before I could make enough money to return to see her.”

Now at age 70, a successful businessman with a happy family, he muses on what life might be like if he arrived in Jamaica today. He says: “To be honest I love politics but I’m very neutral. Either party, I just want the right person. We need good governance, a good leader to govern this country. The people, especially at the lower level, their life should be improved. It’s very important. Government should spend much more money to educate the population. If today our population was more literate, we would have less problems, not crime alone, but all around. It would be easier for people to get jobs. When you have a large section of illiterate population, how many people you can employ as household help? Or gardener? Or something like that? Those jobs are not satisfactory because they are not well-paying jobs. With education and a skill, you can get a better job. Once you don’t have that – because I didn’t have a good education myself. I didn’t have a skill either. I just happened to be street-smart and lucky. Maybe I shouldn’t say lucky, but hard-working, and I succeeded in life. But today, suppose I didn’t have this business? I don’t know what kind of job I could get! Maybe selling behind the counter. How much money that can pay me?” (Continues)

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Courtesy: The Gleaner, Jamaica (Published on February 12, 2012)

Click here for Part-I

The post Gordon Tewani in Jamaica (Part II) first appeared on Sindh Courier.

By Laura Tanna

After Gordon Tewani was the first to make a contribution to the building fund for The Museums of History and Ethnography, The Gleaner asked me to interview him, especially because he came to Jamaica after being a refugee in the partition of India.

Indeed, the Museums received two more donations from overseas, precisely because an immigrant had made the first donation. This series demonstrates that even if English is your second language, even if you don’t have a high-school diploma, even if you have next to nothing, if you are prepared to work extraordinarily hard, be disciplined in your savings and have the good fortune to have loving parents, and a bit of luck, you can still succeed.

Few people realize that one of the people with substantial commercial real estate holdings in Jamaica is actually a refugee from India. Gordhandas Tewani was born in 1939 in Shahdadpur, Sindh where his grandfather, father and uncles were landowners, leasing property to small farmers from whom they collected monthly rent. The youngest of four children, Tewani remembers that their family lived very, very well until 1947 when the partition of India into two countries was decided by Britain. The Tewani family didn’t own a radio, “forget about TV”, he said. “Just by word of mouth, we had to leave almost overnight because what was happening was if they find any Hindus in that part of India, the Muslims were killing them. Mob violence completely. They were burning houses. You just have to hide. When we left it was so terrifying. We couldn’t get any railway to travel because they were all full. There were no airplane, no railway, no buses. We had to resort to oxen-driven cart. If you have seen the movie Gandhi, it was the same scenario. Crossing the border, the Muslims are going to Pakistan. The Hindus are coming to India. We had to camp. We had to stop because it was quite a long journey. I remember the ladies and children would try to sleep. The men would take guard for they had a feeling they might have a raid, from Muslims who would kill the family. Then in the morning we’d start the journey again.

“When we crossed the border, we came to Jodhpur and I remember that we end up at the railway station sleeping on the platform, using the toilet meant for all the passengers.”

Accommodation

“When we crossed the border, we came to Jodhpur and I remember that we end up at the railway station sleeping on the platform, using the toilet meant for all the passengers. We would spread something on the platform and just sleep. In the night, when the train would come, it makes so much noise and shakes because it’s a huge steam engine. We would wake up and go back to sleep. Another train would come; we’d keep on waking up and sleeping. They were giving people free food, roti and a potato vegetable curry, in the morning, afternoon, evening, same. We were on the platform for a week, then my mother’s brother-in-law in Jodhpur had a little place, so he put us on the roof of his house. We used a tarpaulin to protect ourselves from the sun and rain. We had a carpet and a few belongings. My brother and myself would go right on the sidewalk, put the carpet and try to sell our few things to raise some funds. We were in Jodhpur a long time.

“My older sister’s husband was in Bombay (now Mumbai), manager of a big company there and he decided to help us. We moved to Mumbai in 1948, to an area called Worli. Our accommodation wasn’t that great. There was like three families living in a row and three families had to share one toilet. OK, so if you’re in a hurry to use it, tough luck. But that’s how it was. We had a pipe in the kitchen where my mother was cooking. We put a little curtain. You go behind there, put water in the bucket, take water from the bucket and put over your head, use soap and bathe. But at least we could call it our home. It was like a zinc roof but we were very happy. We thought: ‘This is good’. My brother and I started to go to school.

“My father still didn’t know how to make money because he didn’t have any skill and he wasn’t educated. So it was a lot of burden on my mother. She would say that she had already had her dinner, ‘This is all for you and your brother.’ But we knew that she didn’t have her dinner. Because we didn’t even have enough food to eat. So it was very difficult. You could see my mother sometimes arguing with my father, telling him: ‘Where is the money going to come from? We don’t have any rice left.’ It was a struggle to find the school fees. I could see my mother under very strenuous hardship. What happened, my mother was a street-smart person. She wasn’t educated but she knew that education is very, very important. She insist that I go to a Catholic school. That’s where my brother and I learned English. I used to walk and walk and walk to go to school. But it was good. The Father, every time he was to teach us arithmetic or algebra, he had a cane in his hand. You better have your answers ready. Otherwise, you get a whipping. Honestly. I still remember his name: Albert Pereira from Goa.

From India to Jamaica

“I couldn’t concentrate on my studies seeing my mother under pressure so I used to think: ‘I need a job to make money to help my mother.’ My uncle had a business called Cottage Industries. People came from all over the world to buy Indian handicrafts, mostly Sindhis, from Nigeria, Jordan, Jamaica, Europe too. Lot of times they would say they want one or two guys to work for them and he would find people for them. When I was 18 I remember sitting in his office begging him to get me a job. Mr. K. Chandiram, from Jamaica, was in Mumbai and told my uncle that he needed three young fellows to work. So my uncle recommended me. Mr. Chandiram says, “OK, but let me have a talk with him first.” The only question he asked me, if I could speak English. I said, ‘yes,’ so he said: ‘You’ve got the job. Your salary is going to be £20 a month with lodging and boarding.’ I can assure you that if he had said £10 a month I would still have said yes. I was so desperate to get a job.

“It took me three days from Bombay to Kingston on a propeller plane with overnight in London at airline’s expenses. India had a very strict exchange-control law. Mr. Chandiram advanced me 500 rupees, about £25. I kept £5 10 shillings for travel and for the first time I got a shoe. I used to wear an open sandal and walking in the sun – I couldn’t afford a bus or train – my feet used to get so hot, so dry. I remember running and taking shade under a tree so my feet can cool off and I can walk again. It was quite a difficult time in life but I was happy that I had my mother and father. They both were together. They loved us very well, the children and each other.” (Continues) 

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Courtesy: The Gleaner, Jamaica (Published on February 5, 2012)

The post Gordon Tewani: From refugee to real estate mogul (Part-I) first appeared on Sindh Courier.